Shutesbury's Kelley takes health to another level
By Nick Grabbe
Staff Writer
Published on May 09, 2008
SHUTESBURY - Colleen Kelley, an athlete and environmental educator, is featured in the current issue of a national magazine as one of five women over 40 who exemplify healthy lifestyles.
The women are finalists in Prevention magazine's annual "Picture of Health" contest. Visitors to its Web site (prevention.com/pictureofhealth) can see videos of them and vote until May 31 for the winner.
The finalists were profiled May 1 on ABC-TV's "Good Morning America," which will announce the winner in early June (People can also visit http://abcnews.go.com/abcnewsnow/PictureofHealth). The top prize is $5,000 for the winner and $5,000 for the charity of her choice, a live TV appearance, plus another feature in Prevention, which claims more than 11 million readers.
"I believe in a healthy body and a healthy world," Kelley says in her video. "Fitness for me is combining outdoors with a lot of adventure and play."
Kelley, 47, is a science educator at the Hitchcock Center for the Environment in Amherst. She often bicycles 12 miles to work from her home in Shutesbury, has run in two marathons and competed in three triathlons, and inspired friends and co-workers to exercise more.
"My whole life is set up in terms of playing and having adventures, and that includes mowing the lawn, cutting wood and swimming across Lake Wyola," she said in an interview. "I have an optimistic perspective instead of seeing exercise as a chore."
Kelley convinced three of her Hitchcock Center colleagues to bicycle 100 miles over two days to a regional conference of environmental educators in Vermont in 2004. In October they are planning to bike 65 miles each way to the next conference, which is in New Hampshire this year.
She goes on Sunday runs of at least 10 miles with a group of friends. Members of the group have done two triathlons, one with their daughters. Kelley's daughter, Hannah, a college sophomore, joined her in a triathlon of a half-mile swim, 12 miles of bicycling and a 3-mile run. It was Hannah who nominated her mother for the "Picture of Health" contest. In her nomination essay, she wrote that her mother has been an inspiration to her. "She brought me into this world, onto a soccer field, away from the self-deprecating mirror, and across the finish line of a triathlon," Hannah wrote. "If when I grow older, people ever tell me I'm becoming my mother,' I'll smile, laugh, finish lacing up my running shows and never look back." Kelley was surprised to learn that although Prevention is a health and not a fashion magazine, it still puts value on glitz.
One day last winter, she was picked up in a limousine and driven to New York City for a series of photographs and interviews for the spread in Prevention. Although she prefers casual clothes, the magazine went for the corporate businesswoman look, Kelley said.
Prevention's article says that it asked people what good health means to them. "Some entrants answered eating right; others emphasized exercise or spoke of nurturing the mind and spirit," it reads. "These five women do all these and more, plus they encourage others to do the same. They showed us that life does get better after 40, and that you can find your healthy path no matter how many twists and turns it takes to get there."
In the written segment on Kelley, she offers five tips: "Every day I laugh. Hard," "Try to do nothing for 10 minutes" and "Start with an affirmation." Kelley is not overly optimistic about winning the contest over the other finalists, who range in age from 42 to 69. One lost 200 pounds and is now a personal trainer, another has multiple sclerosis and a third is a cancer survivor. Activists in these fields may mobilize more votes, and in fact the other finalists have gotten many more votes so far. "Mostly, it was a gift that my daughter saw this and put it out there," she said.
